A ghost in Marahton TX?

Saturday March 30, 2012
    We're in Sanderson TX, a one street absolutely quie town because it's Easter weekend and just about everything is shut. Today I rode 54 miles from Marathon, on US 90, a lovely rolling road - except for the chipseal - with rolling scrub covered hills, and gray mountains and blue sky and reallynot much else. When I stopped for water, there was an amazing breathtaking silence    everywhere - no birds, no planes, very few cars or trucks. Just an immense silence. It is so rare to find this  total peace of sound anywhere in the world.
   Last night at the Gage Hotel, in the old part of the house asleep in the big iron four poster bed, I woke up around 2 a.m. and heard the sound of someone perhaps drunk in a bar playing four notes on a piano again and again - plink, plink, plink, plink - in a repetitive order, slowly. It went on and on and I was just thinking that no-one should be allowed to play the piano this late - after I looked at the clock - when people were sleeping.  I was thinking about going downstairs to tell them to stop, but I was so tired  that I went back to sleep and woke up with my alarm at 6;45 a.m.
      When I went down to the lobby for coffee, I asked the woman behind the desk who was playing the piano in the middle of the night when people were sleeping. She gave me a strange look and said:  "We have no piano." Someone else said "Ghosts" and she said my room was right by the haunted room which I had noticed was locked next to mine. I was amazed - and surprised - and remembered I had woken up and thought I heard a woman breathing loudly but thought it was my snoring that had woken me up.....but who knows?
     After that surprise, I took my luggage down, had breakfast with everyone else by the van, got my snack and set off to ride  the 54 miles to Sanderson TX. It was a chipseal ride with ups and downs that were slow and doable, and I got to 20 miles and the first Sag and felt fine, so I went on. But one of my water bottles leaked, and I suddenly realized I only had half a bottle left. I stopped to clear it up and two guys with Bubba's Trips, a camping trip covering much the same route, stopped to ask what was wrong. They had extra water so they filled my bottles - which was so wonderful of them - and when I met them at the 45 mile mark, they did it again. So I came in well watered at 1:30 p.m. and di the whole 54 miles.
      I have Room 7 in a basic motel with a/c and a big bed and thin towels, and porches and old wooden chairs and benches to sit on. Linda made delicious chicken pot pie and salad for dinner, and someone's husband had sent chocolate covered strawberries as a gift to us all, which were sooooo delicious.. There were no leftovers, and we had some cookies too.
      Tomorrow is the big 111 mile day ride. Linda asked who had ridden a century and several of the women had done them before. I shall ride as much as I can - maybe to the lunch stop at 60 miles and if we have a tail wind, it should be fine. I am sitting outside at a table by the rooms and we are all winding down. Carla is texting her blog, Susan is reading a book, Jan is looking at her Ipad for confirmation of Scalia's decision to leave the supreme court, and May keeps urging us to eat the slightly soft yogurt iced pretzels, and Dolly is doing her blog, as I am.  Susan just told us that this is the least climbing we've ever done, and Dolly met a woman with a fabulous cactus garden, since this town is the Cactus Capital of Texas.